GALLIPOLI DIARY
by General
SIR IAN HAMILTON, G.C.B.
AUTHOR OF "A STAFF-OFFICER'S SCRAP-BOOK," ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
1920
PRINTED BY
UNWIN BROTHERS, LTD.—WOKING—ENGLAND
SIR ROGER KEYES, VICE-ADMIRAL DE ROBECK,
SIR IAN HAMILTON, GENERAL BRAITHWAITE
PREFACE
On the heels of the South African War came the sleuth-hounds pursuingthe criminals, I mean the customary Royal Commissions. Ten thousandwords of mine stand embedded in their Blue Books, cold and dead as somany mammoths in glaciers. But my long spun-out intercourse with theRoyal Commissioners did have living issue—my Manchurian and Gallipolinotes. Only constant observation of civilian Judges and soldierwitnesses could have shown me how fallible is the unaided militarymemory or have led me by three steps to a War Diary—
(1) There is nothing certain about war except that one side won't win.
(2) The winner is asked no questions—the loser has to answer foreverything.
(3) Soldiers think of nothing so little as failure and yet, to theextent of fixing intentions, orders, facts, dates firmly in their ownminds, they ought to be prepared.
Conclusion:—In war, keep your own counsel, preferably in a note-book.
The first test of the new resolve was the Manchurian Campaign, 1904-5;and it was a hard test. Once that Manchurian Campaign was over I neverput pen to paper—in the diary sense[1]—until I was under orders forConstantinople. Then I bought a note-book as well as a Colt's automatic(in fact, these were the only two items of special outfit I did buy),and here are the contents—not of the auto but of the book. Also, fromthe moment I took up the command, I kept cables, letters and copies(actions quite foreign to my natural disposition), having been taught inmy youth by Lord Roberts that nothing written to a Commander-in-Chief,or his Military Secretary, can be private if it has a bearing onoperations. A letter which may influence the Chief Command of an Armyand, therefore, the life of a nation, may be "Secret" for reasons ofState; it cannot possibly be "Private" for personal reasons.[2]
At the time, I am sure my diary was a help to me in my work. Thecrossings to and from the Peninsula gave me many chances of reckoning upthe day's business, sometimes in clear, sometimes in a queer cipher ofmy own. Ink stands with me for an emblem of futurity, and the act ofwriting seemed to set back the crisis of the moment into a calmerperspective. Later on, the diary helped me again, for although theDardanelles Commission did not avail themselves of my formal offer tosubmit what I had written to their scrutiny, there the records were.Whenever an event, a date and a place were duly entered in their actualcoincidence, no argument to the contrary could prevent them from fallinginto the picture: an advocate might just as well waste eloquence indisputing the right of a piece to its own place in a jig-saw puzzle.Where, on the other hand, incidents were not entered, anything m